The first big tech event of the year seems to be closing and
what we’ve heard coming out from Sony has me seriously worried. The company
just doesn’t seem to have learnt anything from its rapidly sinking fortunes. My
impressions are based on what I’ve read on the web and primarily from IGN’s
blog about Sony so if I have missed something big out – please shout out in the
comments and let me know.

Overall – Does Sony still understand strategy? It’s touted a
lot of features but daily I am struggling more and more to understand what the
company’s priorities and future vision is beyond just trying to sell me stuff
at a high price. It’s a huge big picture vision thing that is failing to tie
together what Sony will be. It’s particularly disconcerting as the company has
never been as heavily challenged internally and externally as it has been
recently with most of its big bets of the past few years coming up below
expectations.

A lot of criticism from IGN that Sony is wasting too much
time on selling the company which I disagree with. Sony at this stage needs o
talk about itself as a company, as a vision for the future. However the problem
is it’s doing this in a poor outdated fashion. It still seems to be pushing
expensive hardware features onto consumers and then coming up with a sloppy
narrative to tie them together into a compelling vision of what the company
will mean to consumers.

4K TV’s

Have we learned
nothing from 3DTV? At least one major step forward has been the recognition
that content is as important as hardware but with what seems lie right now only
Sony leading the charge for 4K Super High Def this looks like a non-starter.
Lets not forget regular High Def still has some ways to go right now in terms
of content and consumer acceptance. Blu-Ray sales are considerably slowing down
and more and more it seems the era of physically buying your movies brought
about behind DVD’s is dying with Video-on-Demand and Streaming gaining every
day. On daily TV programming atleast in my part of the world standard def
content still rules the roost though high def is gaining every day. Early
adopters will be just coming off the false dreams promised by 3DTV which no one
asked for (Now dropped like a hot potato by everyone – manufacturers and
content providers) so will they be willing to jump into a new High Def format? For
everyone else more def for home viewing seems like 3DTV – a non-starter. Samsung and its Smart TV’s seem to be the only
serious innovation that seems to hold a promise of something you’d want to
change your regular TV for and right now Sony seems lost at sea to me in terms
of understanding how consumers are or will want to consume media over the next
2-3 years.

Sony Experia

Woo hoo……snore. Why is this better than my NEXT Samsung or
iPhone? Look Soy, I get it, you love hardware but based on the response to the
previous Experia, the Vita and your history it’s the eco system which still
sucks. I don’t see how this ties into a greater Sony vision. One touch is
not enough, you can get apps for your Android or iPhone to kinda do the same
without buying into Sony for everything in the house – so where is the Unique
Selling Point that is relevant to non-Sony users? Nice phone but the market is
awash with them.

Playstation

For me what was most important here is what was not said.
What was not said is how will Sony make the Vita relevant, so looks like we have
another PSP on hand with even smaller scale. Playstation 3 will continue to
plod on until the PS4 is launched or announced. Playstation mobile will
continue to live within what seems like a doomed Sony exclusive eco-system with
little relevance to the increasing growth of iOS and Android powered phones and
tablets out there.